25 June, 2017 Cobbled together

I was hiking Saturday morning. Sometimes there are no words:

This is what our river looks like. If you don’t get down there, make it a point – that is priceless.

I took that picture when we arrived around 10:15. We hiked for over an hour and we were almost at the parking lot when a large doe stepped across the trail, followed by three fawns. This is the first trashcan near the parking lot; we were that close, and by this time it was 11:40; the parking lot (and the park) were filling up fast. Poor quality shot, but this is right there almost at the parking lot on a Saturday:

Deer crossing the trail at Pony Pasture within sight of the main parking lot at 11:40 on a Saturday morning.

Some weeks I’ll get a picture I love or see something that fascinates me and I’ll be thinking about Sunday’s blog post all week. Some weeks (this week) it’ll be Sunday evening and my mind and this screen are a blank. Unfortunately this week Ev is out of town, but fortunately my friends Pat and Megan invited me over for burgers tonight. And I pulled up to the light at the end of my street and saw – for the first time in it seems like a year – a pair of Red-tailed hawks on the powerline across from DS Freeman High School:

Hawks in the ‘hood – I can almost see this pair from my house

So I was a couple of minutes late but not enough that it would be considered rude. I hope. The burgers and the company were both beyond compare.

So anyway as some of you may know, I am a chocolate addict, and I haven’t admitted I have a problem. And I was low so I stopped at Kroger on the way home for my “fix.” Kroger is where I keep seeing these sunsets that I love so much. Tonight’s wasn’t quite Kroger-on-Maui caliber, but it was lovely:

Seeing this kind of beauty from a grocery store parking lot makes life great. It doesn’t take much.

I haven’t talked about moon pictures recently; it can be a dull subject. It’s possible you’re aware I have some faint obsessions with subjects others might find dull. The moon is always between 0% full and 100% full. The higher percentage full, the easier the photograph. Trust me if you haven’t done this – any picture of the moon between 10% full and 100% full is easy. Anybody can do it. But as they get down into the single digits it’s really, really hard to get a picture. When I came back out of Kroger, the new moon was up – according to an app I have, it was 1 day, 22 hours and 26 minutes old. And it was 5% full. Moonset tonight is at 10:05; I took this picture at 8:58. This was the best picture I could get:

Tiny waxing moon

So, three pictures on this otherwise threadbare blog post I took around dinner time tonight. Fortunately I was able to cobble this together!

Once again – like a stuck record – I am running too late. Blackberries – or perhaps black raspberries – are coming in all over town. Both are equally edible and equally delicious. I’ll look into it more this week; I think I can tell them apart. The lake at Deep Run Park is surrounded by them. They made a great snack Friday before lunch:

These are smaller than grocery store blackberries but infinitely more flavorful

I’m going to go – triathlon training begins tomorrow between work. Have a great week, all best,

Jay